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User blog:Julia-B184/The Division - Part Three
August 13, 2582 AKO Finalizer, Orb Union Space "You seem a bit on edge, Mr. Wilson." Slade was snapped out of his thoughts on the observation deck when he noticed the red-clad Captain Gardner approaching and taking a seat next to the Chief Representative. "Yes, it's hard not to be when the ADVENT Coalition is making my job so difficult." Slade almost snapped, not in the mood to deal with Danielsen's boy scout. "Care to elaborate?" Gardner asked, leaning back in his chair. Slade frowned. "I trust Danielsen and how he's dealing with this mutual problem of ours. That said, ADVENT has been causing me problems from the very beginning with the Civil War. We were making good progress, improving the lives of children all across the Orb Union. Then you arrived and the families began to demand I did something about it. And then the fall of X-COM demanded so much time to saving face with the rest of the galaxy." Gardner paused for a moment. "That's all well and good, but what about the children on Mandalore?" "Mandalore had its systems." "No, it didn't." Gardner shook his head. "King Oliver certainly wasn't concerned about our childrens' education, enhanced or otherwise. He wasn't concerned about if they had clothes on their backs or food in their stomachs. And for all your efforts across the years, Mandalore sat there with no changes as if we weren't part of the Union." "We were working on it." Slade countered. "Your work wasn't doing anything." Gardner reminded him. "So we took matters into our own hands. Is that it? Are you annoyed that we finally wanted our children to have warm food to eat, warm beds to sleep in? I'm sorry our fight for freedom was such an inconvenience to the First-World Conditions of the rest of the Union." "Mandalore's affairs were--" "Were what? Internal? Is that why you commissioned X-COM? First to defend the warehouses, never mind what the money could have done for us? Then to counter the fight for freedom?" Gardner cut him off. "Do you ever wonder where the Knights of Ren came from? They came from a lack of acceptance. The only way to escape discrimination was to give up your identity and become a Sentinel for the rest of your life. Instead of installing your academies on Mandalore, you were making sure the ones in the rest of Orb had fresh textbooks each year." "Captain, do you understand just how hard it is to maintain such academies and conditions across five different, more well-established planets?" Slade did his best to maintain a calm demanour. "I can't quite say that I do." Gardner shook his head. "But can you truly fault us for finally taking things into our own hands? We'd made our appeals. We'd tried the peaceful way out. We asked you for help. And the answer, no matter how sugarcoated, always summed up to 'No'." He straightened up in his seat. "The Mandalorian people became tired of King Oliver asking us to move. And whether you like it or not, it was time to finally plant ourselves where we were and say, 'No, you move.'" "And all you had to do to start it was use a terrorist group as a weapon." Slade replied quietly. "Orb Union has no clean slate either." Gardner leaned forward. "You rightly call us out on our terrorist origins, but you wrongly hold us to them after we continue to make our amends. Should we start holding you to things that you still haven't answered for that the Union is built on? Say, Schnee Dust? Drake Industries? ARGUS? Deathstroke?" Slade froze up at the mention of his former title, turning quietly to glare at the Captain who only stared quietly back in response. His face beared no expression of hatred, but he wasn't going to concede. "Mandalore formed itself on a fight to separate from the tyranny of the TRM, and ended up an ideal asset to the rest of the families so they could pay for their summer and autumn vacation homes. But when ADVENT stepped up to do the same thing, this time it threatened your profits, so you tried to strike us down." Gardner finished. "We're not about to apologize for trying to make Mandalore a better place to live each day." The Chief Representative sat quietly for a few more moments. "Alright, Captain. You've made your point." Gardner said nothing, briefly looking out at the stars before picking up his shield and leaving the deck, where Slade remained and continued to ponder what had been said. Category:Blog posts